Lord Prescott, who is standing for one of the newly created police commissioner posts. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA

Labour has announced a full slate of 41 candidates, including Lord Prescott and six other former ministers, to fight the first ever elections for the newly created post of police commissioner this November.

The announcement of the Labour list on Monday was accompanied by a pledge by Ed Miliband to "make the best of a bad job" and campaign against 16,000 police officer jobs losses and privatised neighbourhood patrols.

"We still believe that the government should call off these November elections and spend the extra money involved on 3,000 new police constables," said the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper.

"If they don't, Labour's talented and experienced candidates for police and crime commissioners will campaign hard against these government cuts, putting neighbourhood policing first, with bobbies on the beat and a promise not to privatise the neighbourhood patrol or leave it only to police community support officers."

Labour, which initially opposed the policy of introducing elected police commissioners, also pledged to look again at their future as a result of the Labour-commissioned review of policing currently being undertaken by the former Metropolitan police commissioner Lord Stevens.

The Conservatives, whose selection process is not yet complete, have so far selected far fewer high-profile candidates. Sir Clive Loader, a retired air chief marshal, is hoping to represent the Tories in Leicestershire.

Conservative hopes that Jan Berry, the former Police Federation chairman, would be selected in Kent were dashed at the weekend when local Conservatives chose instead a Medway Tory councillor and former Ukip deputy leader, Craig MacKinlay, to be the official candidate. Berry's candidacy had been cited by the home secretary, Theresa May, in a Daily Telegraph article in which she argued the elections were a way of putting a "Boris into every community".

A number of independents, including the Falklands war veteran Simon Weston, have also declared their intention to stand.

One-third of the candidates on Labour's list are women. The 41 successful candidates selected on the basis of internal local party ballots include seven former government ministers, a former deputy chief constable and a former deputy prison governor.

The ex-ministers include the former solicitor-general Vera Baird, standing in Northumbria; a former police minister, Alun Michael, in South Wales; the ex-Foreign Office minister Tony Lloyd in Manchester; a former Northern Ireland policing minister, Jane Kennedy, in Merseyside; a former deputy leader of the Commons, Paddy Tipping, in Nottinghamshire, and the former work and pensions minister James Plaskitt in Warwickshire.

The election of Alun Michael, the only sitting MP, would trigger a parliamentary byelection in his Cardiff South and Penarth constituency. His son, Tal, a former police authority chief executive, has been selected to stand for Labour in North Wales.

One of the most closely contested of the nominations was in Merseyside, where Kennedy defeated the former Labour defence minister Peter Kilfoyle in a second-round ballot by 974 to 833 votes.

The deputy chief constable standing for Labour is Ron Hogg in Durham, who has more than 30 years' service in four forces including Cleveland and Durham. The former deputy prison governor is Rachel Rogers in Dorset, who has worked at HMP Verne at Portland and Holloway and Feltham prisons in London.

The Police Foundation thinktank has projected that based on the last general election results adjusted for the supplementary voting system to be used in these elections, the Conservatives could be expected to win 27 of the 41 police commissioner posts, Labour 12 and the Liberal Democrats two. But they add that based on recent opinion polling the results would narrow to the Conservatives winning 21 and Labour 20.

The Liberal Democrats have decided to leave it to their local parties to decide whether or not they wish to enter a candidate in the elections.